


Snapshots (A Misunderstandings Remix)

by only_more_love



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, POV Steve Rogers, Photography, Polyamory, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Remix, The importance of small things, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 14:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20622431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/pseuds/only_more_love
Summary: Steve and Tony were together before Siberia, before Thanos, etc. They reunite and mend fences upon Tony's return to Earth—and make room for Bucky, as well.





	Snapshots (A Misunderstandings Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Menatiera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Misunderstandings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073314) by [Menatiera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/pseuds/Menatiera). 

> This is a remix of Misunderstandings, a lovely fic by Menatiera. You should definitely read it!
> 
> Things you need to know: I intended this to be a much longer and more detailed fic. Unfortunately, my husband was injured and had surgery, so I compressed everything and did the best I could. Also, in addition to Steve and Tony being together as per Menatiera's fic, Pepper and Tony were NOT together romantically as they were in canon in Infinity War and Endgame. Final thing: Tony still has the arc reactor in his chest.

Steve slips the last button on his shirt through the buttonhole and steps toward the bathroom mirror. He sighs heavily through his nose, and his hands grip the edge of the counter hard enough that his knuckles whiten. Fortunately, he manages to loosen his hold before he cracks the counter. It’s close, though—too close. Shame, hot and bitter, fills his mouth as he realizes he almost damaged part of the home Tony built for him and the team. 

Tony, with his bright eyes and his brilliance; with the petal-soft smile he only wore around Steve, like it was a special secret just the two of them shared. Tony, who died in space, alone, so far from home and so far from where Steve’s hands could reach. 

What good is this serum-enhanced body? Of what use are his supersoldier hands if they’re never quick enough or strong enough to save the men he loves?

Steve has just trained his gaze on his reflection, eyeing the thick, dark beard he grew while on the run and wondering if today’s the day when he’ll finally shave it, when he feels the vibrations move through the compound like an electrical current, strong enough that the long-armed mirror stationed at eye-level sings a chiming metal-and-glass melody.

* * *

The ship’s hatch opens. A blue-skinned creature—no, a person—pauses near the top, supporting...Supporting—

Dark hair. Dark eyes. So unnaturally thin and slight that Steve’s lungs wrench, making him sputter for breath, and for a moment he thinks the serum’s worn off and his asthma has returned. 

But it’s him.

_ Oh, god. Tony’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. _ The refrain batters Steve’s skull, loud and percussive, pounding everywhere—in his head; in his empty, useless hands that could do nothing but clutch the ashes that used to be Bucky; in his chest that has felt hollow and black, his ribs caved in, since he got the call from Bruce about Tony and Thanos.

_ Oh, god. _ It’s been weeks since Thanos and the decimation, and Steve thinks he’s been sleepwalking since then, just going through the motions because he has to, damn it, he has to. Erskine gave him the serum for a reason, and even though Steve sometimes curses it and wishes, futilely, to be ash dancing in the wind because at least then he’d be with Bucky, or to be in the bleak vacuum of space with whatever’s left of Tony, somehow, _ somehow_, Steve keeps moving.

But he can’t remember the last time he moved this fast.

Steve’s feet churn earth as he runs, the scents of night, trees, and dew-damp grass thick in his nose. _ Alive, alive, alive _: a blood-thrumming chant in the very marrow of Steve’s bones. He’s shaking. A roar and a rush like the wild, untamed sea fills his ears and cleaves his chest into something raw and blood-messy.

It’s only fair: in Siberia, he drove his shield into Tony’s chest like it had a home there.

Steve nearly stumbles.

Wouldn’t it be funny if he pitched forward and fell at Tony’s feet in the grass? It would be okay; maybe Tony would let him wrap his arms around his legs. Just that much, it would be enough for Steve.

Though Tony’s mouth moves, though Steve cares what he said, the clamor in his head is too great; he can’t hear past it.

Tony’s face: starvation-hollowed cheeks and beard untidy as Steve has never seen it before—but real and present and here and alive—new-old terrain Steve learns and relearns with his big, clumsy, shaking hands. He’s alive. 

The greatest and most terrible lesson Steve has learned is that time stumbles on. Inexorably. Perennially. It did when sickness took his ma; it did when he couldn’t save Bucky from that icy ravine; it did when he left Peggy and his world and plunged into the deep, dark, indifferent sea.  
  
But for a moment—for this brief, shining moment, there is just this: Tony—and nothing else matters.

His dark eyes stay open as Steve bends toward him. Steve wants to speak. Wants to ask permission and beg for forgiveness and give thanks, all in the same breath. He does none of these things. Now, as back then, a lifetime ago, when the man in front of him made the first move and kissed Steve in an art gallery, surrounded by Steve’s paintings, he leans forward and up. Steve keeps his eyes open right until that lightning-strike joining of their mouths. At the first gentle touch of Tony’s chapped lips, the tumult in Steve’s head silences like a switch has been flicked, and other sounds filter back in. There. There: the clomp of his own heartbeat. There: the tired patter of Tony’s. There: a small, wounded sound low in Tony’s throat. Steve wants to kiss it away. 

“Steve.” Warm and muffled against his lips.

Turning his head, Steve speaks, his lips buried in Tony’s hair, near his ear: “I’m so sorry. About everything.” His voice cracks. “I wasn’t—” 

“Just shut up,” Tony replies, cutting him off, his trembling fingers on Steve’s cheeks and jaw like birds about to take flight, “my beautiful, bearded idiot.” Tired eyes wide open and staring at Steve like _ he’s _ the miracle, Tony strokes Steve’s beard that he’s never seen before tonight, and Steve is suddenly, irrationally happy he hasn’t been able to shave it yet. Tony’s fingers sing, shift, slide; he uses his benevolent grip to tilt Steve’s face until he’s right where he wants him. 

With the stars in the sky bearing witness, steeping them in starlight, with stars going supernova in his chest and in the soft, broken place where their mouths meet, again and again, like something inevitable and true, Steve curls his arms around Tony’s too-thin body, taking all his weight and sharing what strength he has, and gives silent thanks; gives himself permission to believe once again in a world where impossible things can happen.

They surface from the kiss like they’re being born.

* * *

  
Because they’ve always been better together, Steve, Tony, Bruce, Clint, Thor, Natasha, and Rhodey, with help from some visitors from space, find ways to make impossible things happen: they defeat Thanos and bring back the vanished ones. 

On the still-smoking battlefield, Steve sits on his knees, bloody, lungs working like bellows. A metal hand reaches out to him. “Get up, punk,” the voice says, and backlit as the tall figure is, Steve can’t make out the face in front of him. 

Steve grips the hand tightly and doesn’t let go. Gritting his teeth against the pain throbbing through every cell in his body, he uses the dregs from his reservoir of strength to pull the figure down to him. Then they are laughing, trembling, hugging.

(The greatest and most terrible lesson Steve has learned is that time stumbles on. Inexorably. Perennially.  
  
But for a moment—for this brief, shining moment, there is just this: Bucky—and nothing else matters.)

Over Bucky’s broad shoulder, Steve’s gaze catches and holds Tony’s. His face dotted with blood and dirt, Tony still smiles and nods, once.

_ Alive, alive, alive_: a blood-thrumming chant in the very marrow of Steve’s bones. 

* * *

  
The three of them have nightmares and bad days. Such is the price of living through as much as they have. It still beats the alternative, Steve thinks. 

One night, after J.A.R.V.I.S. has informed them that Bucky is awake and showing signs of intense anxiety after a nightmare, Steve goes to Bucky; holds him until the wild tremors quiet and Bucky falls back asleep in the tornado of his bed.

When Steve leaves him and quietly returns to the room he shares with Tony, trying not to make noise as he slides back into bed next to Tony, Tony speaks. “You don’t have to choose between us,” he says into the darkness. “I won’t make you.” His hand fumbles in the black until it tangles with Steve’s.

An eternity of silence follows. “I love you,” Steve finally whispers, “both of you,” and while he doesn’t regret his feelings, they are inconvenient, and there is a part of him that’s ashamed that he can’t choose between Bucky and Tony.

“I know.” As if he senses Steve’s anguish, Tony’s warm, calloused fingers gently squeeze Steve’s. “And it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve replies, throat tight, his voice sounding foreign.

“Oh, no, sweetness. Don’t be sorry.” Tony’s free hand walks over Steve’s chest; settles over his pulse. “Listen,” he says, rubbing a soft circle into Steve’s skin, “the stuff we’ve lived through...Please never be ashamed of your big heart. Talk to Bucky. I’m okay with whatever this is—or can be. We’ll work it out.” He tugs Steve closer; Steve settles his head on Tony’s chest and falls asleep by the blue light of the arc reactor.

As he slides into dreams, Steve’s last conscious thought is that Tony’s the one with the big heart. 

* * *

  
It’s not perfect, but they stumble into a rhythm that works well enough. Steve spends time with Bucky; Steve spends time with Tony. Eventually, the three of them spend time together, though the common thread is Steve. Tony and Bucky become...friends—or something like it. Steve is cautiously happy; this is more than he’s ever thought he’d have.

Saturday night rolls around, and with no emergency in sight yet, Tony decides they’re going out. He takes them downtown to the same gallery where Steve had his first showing. “There’s a Mapplethorpe exhibit I think you’ll like,” he says to Steve as they step in off the winter-cold street and into the brightness and heat of the gallery. “Photographs,” Tony adds with a broad smile and dancing eyes, reeling him in by the charcoal grey scarf Steve has looped around his neck and pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s cold lips. “You’ll see.”  
  
When Tony pulls back, Steve blinks open his eyes and finds Bucky’s gaze moving back and forth between Steve and Tony, a faint smile curling the soft pink of his lips. “What?” Steve asks him.

Bucky just shakes his head.  
  
Conversation flows and ebbs around them; shoes click and tap against the wood floor. All that quickly fades into very distant background noise as Steve takes in the black and white photographs displayed on the gallery walls. The first photo his eyes land on is a [ tight-focus shot of a naked man](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/kevin-kopelson/beauty-plus-terror). The photo is taken from roughly the navel down, and the faceless man holds a Polaroid camera above his pubic hair and his penis. It’s not a crass image, though, and despite the delicate flush of heat in Steve’s cheeks, he lingers for a while in front of it, arrested not by the anonymous cock but the prominent tributaries of veins winding through the man’s wiry forearms. 

After Steve finally shifts his attention, he realizes Tony and Bucky are no longer with him. Moving carefully through the crowd of pretty people, Steve finds them, eventually, standing side by side in front of[ a photo of two shirtless men](https://www.artsy.net/artwork/robert-mapplethorpe-two-men-dancing), both of them wearing crowns. Their stance suggests they're dancing, and the photo has about it a sense of captured motion. The shorter of the two men in the picture has his eyes closed, seemingly in bliss, and his cheek rests against the other’s shoulder. It’s a gorgeous, stirring photograph Steve thinks he could examine for hours and not be bored, but that’s not what causes the sudden lump in his throat.  
  
“You like it?” Tony asks, stripping off his gloves and shoving them into the pockets of his navy peacoat. He steps to the side, gracefully closing some of the distance between himself and Bucky and lightly bumping Bucky’s metal hand with his hand. 

Bucky angles his head down, his dark hair a waterfall flowing over the front of his shoulder, and Steve hears the steady thump of Bucky’s heart pick up speed. “Yeah, I like it,” he says, and until now, Steve has only ever heard Bucky use that tone of voice with him. Bucky shifts one step closer to Tony, and as Steve looks on from behind them, eyes wide and dry because he’s afraid to blink and miss something, Bucky very, very slowly hooks his metal pinky finger with Tony’s.

* * *

  
The next afternoon, Tony builds Bucky a digital SLR camera and a dizzying array of lenses.

With a level of patience Steve’s surprised by, Tony slowly teaches Bucky how to use the camera. 

* * *

  
As a first anniversary present for both Steve and Tony, Bucky prints and frames a black and white photograph of Steve painting Tony welding in his workshop.

They thank Bucky enthusiastically and even allow him to shoot them while they do so. Steve’s favorite of that bunch of photographs turns out to be one that would fit right in at a Mapplethorpe exhibit: Bucky’s metal hand gleams as it grips Steve’s hair, and Steve's eyes are closed as his mouth curls sweetly around Bucky’s dick while Tony, his lips kiss-bitten and pleasure-slack, blankets Steve’s broad back and fills him from behind. 

The only people who see that picture are the three of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading; I hope you found something you enjoyed in this fic. Comments and kudos are always appreciated; I always reply to comments, though it can sometimes take me a while. You can also find me on Tumblr; my name there is onlymorelove.


End file.
